I’ve been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called polimiositis. It’s basically my own immune system attacking my own muscles. I’ve had some random symptoms before, but they really picked up the better I was doing with this protocol. So this made me wonder that if my immune system is attacking me and I am making it stronger, then I am giving it more power to attack me so logically this would lead to worsening of those symptoms. Anyone agree with me or know any other logical explanation on how would this work (meaning rebuilding immune system but not making an autoimmune disease worse).

orka1998 wrote: I’ve been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called polimiositis. It’s basically my own immune system attacking my own muscles. I’ve had some random symptoms before, but they really picked up the better I was doing with this protocol. So this made me wonder that if my immune system is attacking me and I am making it stronger, then I am giving it more power to attack me so logically this would lead to worsening of those symptoms. Anyone agree with me or know any other logical explanation on how would this work (meaning rebuilding immune system but not making an autoimmune disease worse).

Arijana

Have you asked yourself why your immune system is attacking your own tissues ??

There is one part of the immune system that regulates it. The “suppressors cells” When those cells are malfunctioning, there is a possible auto-immune attack.

People with chronic intestinal fungal overgrowth and with mercury toxicity are at risk of autoimmune diseases.

dvjorge wrote: Have you asked yourself why your immune system is attacking your own tissues ??

I can ask myself but there will be no answer as I do not know. I only know what is described everywhere about the disease I was diagnosed with. The explanation of it is that my own system is attacking the muscle tissue, and it is similar to ms but just not as bad as it sticks to the muscle tissue not nerves.

dvjorge wrote: There is one part of the immune system that regulates it. The “suppressors cells” When those cells are malfunctioning, there is a possible auto-immune attack.

People with chronic intestinal fungal overgrowth and with mercury toxicity are at risk of autoimmune diseases.

I did connect the dots with candida overgrowth and this disease and do believe it is a consequence of me having the overgrowth for most of my life. The problem I have is how do I treat it? If I am treating candida, I must strengthen my immune system, but then my immune system is attacking me even more. So you see the dilemma? I am now stuck in one of those “what’s older, chicken or the egg” circle and no matter how I approach it I have no way out. If I treat the polymiositis, I will damage my immune system even more. If I treat candida which is a root cause, I may end up in wheelchair before I’m done! So I will be rather healthy but unable to care for myself, how ironic.

Have you done any research on the condition? I’m not going to tell you to ignore your doctor’s advice, but your experience with candida has probably taught you it shouldn’t be taken at face value. The more you can learn about it yourself, the better your chances of recovery. Start off by reading the Wiki on Polymyositis.

The etiology of polymyositis is unknown and may be multifactorial, perhaps related to autoimmune factors,[1] genetics, and viruses. In rare cases, the cause is known to be infectious, associated with the pathogens that cause Lyme disease, toxoplasmosis, and other infectious agents.

Inflammation is helpful in preventing the spread of infection. However, in some health conditions, the immune system triggers inflammation even though no infection is present. These are known as autoimmune conditions

Both treatments you mentioned sound purely symptomatic to me, and won’t get to the root cause of the problem. Just like patients of arthritis and MS, you’re expected to pay for your prescriptions and put up with the increasing side-effects for the rest of your life. It’s such a cynical approach.

People are able to overcome so-called auto-immune diseases like arthritis, so it shows us that there’s something missing from the medical approach. Your doctor has told you what his plan is, and you can take his advice on board, but you shouldn’t give up investigating and experimenting with whatever you can to find a cure. Like Jorge said, you have to ask why.

Have you asked yourself why your immune system is attacking your own tissues ??

I can ask myself but there will be no answer as I do not know. I only know what is described everywhere about the disease I was diagnosed with. The explanation of it is that my own system is attacking the muscle tissue, and it is similar to ms but just not as bad as it sticks to the muscle tissue not nerves.

dvjorge wrote: There is one part of the immune system that regulates it. The “suppressors cells” When those cells are malfunctioning, there is a possible auto-immune attack.

People with chronic intestinal fungal overgrowth and with mercury toxicity are at risk of autoimmune diseases.

I did connect the dots with candida overgrowth and this disease and do believe it is a consequence of me having the overgrowth for most of my life. The problem I have is how do I treat it? If I am treating candida, I must strengthen my immune system, but then my immune system is attacking me even more. So you see the dilemma? I am now stuck in one of those “what’s older, chicken or the egg” circle and no matter how I approach it I have no way out. If I treat the polymiositis, I will damage my immune system even more. If I treat candida which is a root cause, I may end up in wheelchair before I’m done! So I will be rather healthy but unable to care for myself, how ironic.

Arijana

I don’t see it that impossible way. You should treat candida and your immune balance will come back some day. When the fungus be eliminated, the immune system should balance. You also need to consider possible heavy metal toxicity. Addressing both if it was the case, will assure better results. Keep in mind that the immune suppression the fungal form of candida causes is at cellular level (cell-mediated immunity) On the other hand, candida over-activate a humoral immune response (everything extracellular) It is a depressed cell mediate protection but a hyper-active extracellular protection. It means you will react to fumes, toxins, food, chemicals, and external offenders that touch your body.

A fungal overgrowth become people universal reactors since the immune system unbalance. It is like you have a hyper-activated very sensitive chronic state.

Understanding it, you are better prepared to fight the problem. Jorge.

I don’t see it that impossible way. You should treat candida and your immune balance will come back some day. When the fungus be eliminated, the immune system should balance. You also need to consider possible heavy metal toxicity. Addressing both if it was the case, will assure better results. Keep in mind that the immune suppression the fungal form of candida causes is at cellular level (cell-mediated immunity) On the other hand, candida over-activate a humoral immune response (everything extracellular) It is a depressed cell mediate protection but a hyper-active extracellular protection. It means you will react to fumes, toxins, food, chemicals, and external offenders that touch your body.

A fungal overgrowth become people universal reactors since the immune system unbalance. It is like you have a hyper-activated very sensitive chronic state.

Understanding it, you are better prepared to fight the problem. Jorge.

Hi Jorge,

I do understand what you are saying and I do believe that I would have to take care of the candida as the root cause of the problem, but I worry that it’s a bit too late for me as treating candida will last a long time and at the time I am loosing muscle tissue every day. From everything I read online, only corticosteroids and meds that suppress immune system stop this process. If I don’t take them and only treat candida, I will have nothing left by the time I am done. I did get rid of 90% of my candida symptoms in 5 months of treatment but this is getting worse and worse. I now have trouble blow-drying my hair or feeding my kids as my hand gets sore with holding the spoon in the air for few minutes. I have hard time pressing the clutch in my car if I had to walk for 15 minutes to get to my car. I can visually see that my muscles are gone. At first I contributed it to weight loss, but now I see that it’s not it. My muscles are getting saggy and I am starting to look like an old lady. I don’t mind the look , but I am very independent person (which is a good thing considering I am a single mom of two) and at the moment I see my future of not being able to care for myself, let alone those two kids. I would prefer death over being dependent so this is hitting me hard right now. I am trying not to freak out, and so far I did pretty good with that, but I also have a very hard time making a decision on how to approach this. I knew for couple of weeks what doctors suspect of and did a lot of reading and have nothing to but steroids and immune suppressant drugs thrown at me.

If I had learned about candida only year earlier, everything would be so much different!

Have you been getting enough protein as well? I was reading a good explanation about getting 600 total calories from carbs + protein. The balance is up to you, e.g. 100g protein, 50g carbs, 75g of each etc. Doing that means your body doesn’t need to do any conversion to get glucose, and spares your liver. If you eat less than 50g carbs and drop into ketosis, you’ll need over 100g of protein to prevent muscle wasting. The protocol diet could easily exasperate other health problems if you’re not careful with your nutrient intake.

Javizy wrote: Have you been getting enough protein as well? I was reading a good explanation about getting 600 total calories from carbs + protein. The balance is up to you, e.g. 100g protein, 50g carbs, 75g of each etc. Doing that means your body doesn’t need to do any conversion to get glucose, and spares your liver. If you eat less than 50g carbs and drop into ketosis, you’ll need over 100g of protein to prevent muscle wasting. The protocol diet could easily exasperate other health problems if you’re not careful with your nutrient intake.

Hi Javizy,

I was thinking the same way as you and as I really don’t have much knowledge about the right way of eating (in terms of carb, protein, fat ratio) I did play around with it. I increased protein, then I increased fat, then I wrote down everything I ate and tried for few suggested ratios on few sites (even Bee’s ratio) and finally added some carbs back (I went to phase two) just to test it and no matter what I did or ate these symptoms stayed the same. It did lift just a little since I went into phase two, but not that much to be honest. I also made sure I ate a lot of foods and this didn’t change anything. I’ve been testing myself it for two months, one on strict diet and one on phase two and no matter what I did, these symptoms were still here. Oddly enough, my candida symptoms did not come back when I went to phase two and this surprised me as I was sure I had more work to do there. I paid for several tests testing minerals etc. to see if it was nutrition that caused it and all came back fine. Then I stopped all my supplements for about a week to see if some of those are making trouble and nothing changed. Increasing salt intake did help a bit (I was only slightly low on sodium on each bloodwork), but not that much either. So you see I did try so many things before I went back to doctors and I could not figure it out myself.

As this disease is described as immune system’s attack on muscles, it kind of makes sense that symptoms were worse when immune system got a bit stronger as it was fighting me even harder. What troubles me though is that I am on an anti-inflammatory diet (this is what strict diet is for the most part) so why do I have so much inflammation still (if inflammation is the autoimmune response) and how bad would it be then if I was not on this diet!

I don’t know Javizy, I’m just a bit lost here. I did read a lot about it these past couple of weeks and kept quiet until the diagnosis was confirmed. I do think that I understand what this disease is and there is no mention about natural treatments for it so this makes me so uneasy.

I actually decided to get another test before making a decision about the corticosteroids. There are three tests that are generally done for diagnostic. Blood test is, as usual, inconclusive and often incorrect. EMG is pretty sure for the muscle weakness, but there is also a muscle biopsy which my doctor felt there is no need to do as the symptoms match, the EMG confirms it and a biopsy of my small intestine mentions autoimmune diseases (oh, that biopsy actually confirmed everything we read about inflammation of the small intestine and leaky gut and in the end points to food allergies, autoimmune diseases, IBS etc.) but I would like to be apsolutely sure this diagnosis is correct for two reasons. First, if I will make a decision to take such an awful therapy, I want to be sure I know what I take it for. Second, if it’s not the right diagnosis then it means it’s something else and I hope it’s not something worse like MS (which was the first suspicion of several other doctors who lead me to the current specialist) and if I leave it untreated or mask it with low dose of corticosteroids, I could get into more trouble down the line. I am where I am today because I could not get a diagnosis, not the right one I needed anyway…

Views

ABOUT US

Lisa Richards is an expert in digestive health and the author of the Ultimate Candida Diet program. She writes regular posts on the causes, symptoms, and treatment of Candida, and has helped thousands of Candida sufferers recover their health.

Useful Info

Newsletter

Sign up to Unlock your FREE Guide To Improving Your Digestion!

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Information is presented for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the advice of your healthcare professional. Consult your doctor or health professional before starting a treatment or making any changes to your diet. Also note that this page may contain affiliate links.